Having read Ms. Bellafante's rant I can't help wondering what criteria the New York Times has for hiring reviewers. I imagine the good ones are probably allowed some leeway in terms of content, but judging from some of Ms. Bellafante's other "reviews" I don't think that adjective applies to her so why, then, is she allowed to go on her little personal slagfest and ignore the subject she's supposed to be discussing? The only bits relevant to Game of Thrones would lead you to believe that it's an epic tale of illicit sex and global warming. That would be... inaccurate, to say the least.

I'd also like to know how the New York Times goes about assigning materials. Again, I'm sure there's a hierarchy involved, but wouldn't it behoove them to make at least a token effort to match stuff to a reviewer's taste? If for no other reason than to avoid what has happened here: a reviewer who so loathes the genre she's reviewing that she doesn't even pretend to understand or care about its actual content? This isn't the first time Ms. Bellafante has been forced to review SF&F; her rant about Supernatural, for instance, is another sight to behold. Why, then, is she being forced to do it?

Slag the lady all you want, but she's clearly repulsed by the very idea of fantasy so she's hardly likely to offer up a fair and comprehensive review of anything that is outside her "comfort zone." I know that as a geek girl if someone forced me to write reviews of Jersey Shore and Real Housewives I'd find it virtually impossible not to express my complete abhorrence of the shows and of the reality TV genre itself.

What Bellafante did was wrong and unfair, but she only did it because it was assigned to her by the New York Times... and they let her get away with it.